He actually did spell it out under "Who owns whatever rights there are?"

You should have just read the story, and then you would have seen it in paragraph 8?

In mat's defense, this is sort of an ongoing topic. You could have clicked the link to his previous Lawbringer article for some backstory, where Defense of the Ancients is actually the first phrase.

He really should have a clearer indicator that this is part of a series though, for those that havent been following it for the last two weeks. This new column naming thing is getting annoying.

It wasn't a very clear way of saying that Defense of the Ancients is what DotA stands for. Could have been better written toward the start of the article, with something like 'DotA (acronym for Defense of the Ancients)'. I knew what it stood for but even reading and seeing the phrase in the later paragraph didn't really give a clear 'ah, thats what that stands for' sense for someone who doesnt know what it means.

Honestly, anyone who has enough knowledge on the subject to be reading this article other than because you know him personally and want to read whatever he writes (hi matt's mom!), should know what it stands for by now.

This issue has been going on for years, and this is just the culmination of the awkward naming debacle. DotA has been around for at least 5 years (not stopping my rant to go look it up), so at this point, he is writing a specialized article for a target audience who should have at least that minimal bit of background knowledge.

TL;DR: Play more WC3, know stuff.

1337 H4, your username and your response go together nicely. Just an observation.

I'll admit, I had no idea what DotA stood for either, and I kept waiting for it to be explained. I did finally click on the link to the last article, and from there, clicked on the link to the Wiki, and from there opened tabs to the various websites mentioned, and I ended up learning quite a bit (Oh glorious internet). But it still seems a quick (aka Defense of the Ancients) insertion would have been helpful. Kind of nit-picky, but a fair observation.

I'm glad I researched it, though. Interesting topic of which, until today, I had no knowledge.

Its still considered good writing to spell out acronyms that aren't expected to be common knowledge to everyone reading. Hell, even going to someplace like elitist jerks where you have to be a hardcore WoW player (see, I don't have to spell that one out because this is a site dedicated directly to the game, and hence it can be expected that every single person here knows it) still have the various abbreviations spelled out at the start.

Side note, the preferred format is to spell it out once and then put the abbreviation in parentheses, like "...Defense of the Ancients (DotA) blah blah blah" and then continue using the abbreviation from there on out.

As for "Why are you reading this if you weren't reading the previous ones?", its WoWInsider, I probably didn't see the last one, and this one looked vaguely interesting. Until it got to where there was no way to figure out wtf he was talking about within the article itself.